Abby Zbikowski

Abby Zbikowski creates experimental dance works that pay homage to the effort of living, tactics of survival, and the aesthetics produced as a result. She founded Abby Z and the New Utility in 2012 to create works utilizing the physical aspects and psyche-emotional experience of her rigorous training in African and Afro-diasporic forms, playing sports, and performing manual labor. In 2017 Abby received the Juried Bessie Award for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary [employed] in complex and demanding structures to create works of great energy, intensity, surprise, and danger” and a United States Artists Fellowship in 2020. She was an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-In-Residence at the Lewis Center at Princeton University, with past residencies at New York Live Arts, Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, STREB, and the Wexner Center. She is an Associate Professor of Dance at The Ohio State University, previously on faculty at University of Illinois, American Dance Festival, and Bates Dance Festival. Abby has studied at Germaine Acogny’s L’École de Sables in Senegal, taught at the Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia and Festival Un Pas Vers L’Avant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and is currently creating a work for Dublin-based Irish Modern Dance Theatre.